You Changed
by TallysGreatestFan
Summary: For almost their whole lives the poet Shaal Mayan and Satai Delenn are closest friends, yet as they meet again months after Delenns transformation, they have to witness that it affects their friendship too


**You Changed**

Shaal Mayan absolutely hadn't expected how much it would shock her to see Delenn so entirely transformed, she, the liberal-minded, always new experiences seeking poet. She had looked forward this day since weeks, after Delenn had informed her that she would found time to meet her at her visit of Minbar too. And still…

At the first moment she thought a human woman dressed in Minbari robes would skulk around before her house, and given the unobtrusive warily look of the guy down the street she wasn't the only one. Only as Delenn took of her hood and said ,,Mayan?" to the holo camera she recognized her.

Now Delenn stood at the corridor, one hand on the wall interface, the other undetermined at the fastening of her mantle, and brown black hair streamed around her face and neck and over her shoulders – it looked like array, like the black Girbra-feathers or the delicate wickerwork that the southwestern clans knot at their bone crests, or maybe like the animal fur that shamans and tribe priestesses of times long ago bound around their heads to better connect with the universe trough the spirit of the animal. Yet it truly was part of her head. Just as much as the last part of bone crest was that stock out from underneath the hair. It was a bit like seeing somebody again after they had cut their crest differently. This before her was Delenn, definitely, and the picture of her in her head was overwritten with the changed new one, so that the memory of how Delenn had looked her whole damn live until a few months had begun to fade already. But this was so much more than just an new cut. Delenn wasn't a Minbari anymore. Not fully. Something else.

,,How did the negotiations work? As tiring as always? Do you want something to eat, over there should be flarn and tea."

They sat down out in the garden, between sculptures, and did not talk, not really, like they had not done since Delenn became something different, alien. Certainly, Delenn talked precise about the political situation, keen and rational as always, and they told unimportant things from their everyday live. But they did not go deeper and even did not mention their feelings. In this moment Delenn seemed to her like the secretive, unpredictable, incredibly mighty politician and Satai, not like her closest friend. A living symbol of her ideals instead of a real person. She hated it. Their friendship lasted so long already and went so deep, even Delenns transformation shouldn't be able to destroy it. But they hadn't really talked for months.

,,What is this?", asked Delenn and pointed at something among a conglomeration of items that Mayan found inspiring. ,,That is new, isn't it?"

,,The xenoliterary scholar from whom I told you insisted that I had to pick a souvenir from his collection and I choose this. It originates from the twentieth century of humans and is called lava lamp. I find it in some way meditative to watch this Bubbles ascend and descend."

Delenns gaze was directed inward more than on the lamp and she almost seemed melded with the universe extending around her, even more part of it than she already was as she answered. One of this ethereal moments she always had have: ,,It almost seems to me as if it illustrates the constant flow of matter, how it is always in transition. Constantly it parts and finds together anew, atoms combine and built molecules and part again, live forms become dead matter and dead matter becomes part of live forms, and out of matter arises consciousness." Her head jerked to the right and suddenly she looked normal again. ,,But presumably the humans did not interpret that much into it as they created it."

Mayan laughed, but it sounded slightly hysterical.

,,Well, I know that you would prefer other strange human things…", teased Mayan, and became silent. To make fun about Delenns nicely put exotic taste in men was an old practice between them, but now…

Delenn froze, and the silence between them lasted a moment longer than it had to be, and felt smothering.

,,Damn, she is half-human herself now…"

,,I am plain spoken to exhausted for long conversations, would a movie be pleasing to you?"

And so they sat before the hologram and devoured Mayans snack supply and it was almost like in times past, like always. Yet Delenns look was vapid.

Mayan grabbed her shoulder: ,,Is everything all right?"

,,Is everything all right?", immediately occurred her, ,,Stupid question. She is a hybrid now, every damn cell of her body was overwritten and foreign policy damn it goes blazes. And the man with whom she felt deeply connected and who she perhaps even loved has married somebody else and isn't any longer commander of Babylon 5, because Earth Alliance told him of to ambassador for some reason, obviously nothing is all right."

Mayan remembered that Delenn, as they hardly were adults, had told her crying that she felt not really related to the Minbari, as if she wouldn't be one of them in truth. At countless conversations about this feeling that had happened after this. Delenn always was jealous on her, because she used her differentness as source of creativity, and because she nevertheless was a real Minbari. But Mayan was jealous about how Delenn followed her aims, now matter how difficult this was and no matter the consequences. And the shy Delenn became the wise, threatening Satai, who tried to connect the Minbari with the other peoples of the galaxy. Who was proud about thinking beyond her own people, and whose ideology was found on this. And now she truly was not just Minbari anymore, but alien to, like she always was in her heart. But nevertheless it did not seem to relieve her.

,,Everything is all right.", told Delenn and smiled, yet her eyes looked sad, ,,It is a relieve to be able to talk about this with somebody who does see me as more than a genetic monstrosity or precocity. By now I am desperate enough to call my attaché too a close friend, yet probably this poor little thing just behaves so friendly towards me because I intimidated him so much at our first encounter that he almost pissed himself, as the humans would put it."

,,Delenn.", said Mayan because her, the poet, did not came anything else to mind. And she could not thought anything else than ,,You changed." and suddenly realized that she had said it aloud. Why did she say something like this?

,,Yes", Delenn muttered and her lips quivered in this special way that was so typical for her when she suffered.

,,It… By Valen, damn… I'm sorry for how reserved I behaved and for saying something like this, I… I just don't want to act wrong, and thereby a behave all the more wrong."

,,Thank you, Mayan.", she grasped her shoulder shortly, but it felt as if she would snuggle up to her turning for comfort, ,,Let's watch the movie further."

Afterwards they talked excited about the content and for a moment Mayan forgot that Delenn was half human by now, or maybe she just didn't noticed it anymore. And maybe it was as easy as that.


End file.
